someotherguy
I'm Awesome
All depends on the amount of work you're comfortable doing. You can get the harness connector out of your 88-91 style dash without cutting it, it's just a pain. Helps immensely if you drop your column then pull all the top screws from the dash and then the lower bolts so that you can swivel it down and reach behind. Of course the dash being brittle plastic, all of that is sketchy anyway...
I'd say the 1992-1994 cluster is the way to go if you don't mind making the supporting mods. The external DRAC is easier to work with, the clusters are FAR easier to find and that's a huge statement right there (1991 needle cluster is practically hen's teeth), and the clusters also seem to be more reliable in general - none of that "suddenly/randomly just craps out, speed signal lost, torque converter unlocks" mess.)
If I were to do the 1988-1991 cluster swap to 1992-1994 style, I have suggested this before: get a donor dash shell that is busted up so you don't mind chopping a piece out of it. Cut out a large piece of the plastic area around the connector. Mark it off and make clean cuts. Then use it as a template to cut your old dash, and use Devcon Plastic Weld glue (or hell in this case maybe even just Krazy Glue) and some scrap plastics as sort of bandages to bridge it in a few areas for strength. My reasoning behind this is the 1992-1994 cluster sits on the connector pins with just those flexi-circuit "fingers", instead of a true pin/socket arrangement, so it's important that it sits on there solidly. The 1992-1994 dash has a raised area around the connector whereas 1988-1991 does not. So if you do the swap and don't modify the dash plastic, your connector is just kind of sitting loose in there and may fall out at some point.
Richard
I'd say the 1992-1994 cluster is the way to go if you don't mind making the supporting mods. The external DRAC is easier to work with, the clusters are FAR easier to find and that's a huge statement right there (1991 needle cluster is practically hen's teeth), and the clusters also seem to be more reliable in general - none of that "suddenly/randomly just craps out, speed signal lost, torque converter unlocks" mess.)
If I were to do the 1988-1991 cluster swap to 1992-1994 style, I have suggested this before: get a donor dash shell that is busted up so you don't mind chopping a piece out of it. Cut out a large piece of the plastic area around the connector. Mark it off and make clean cuts. Then use it as a template to cut your old dash, and use Devcon Plastic Weld glue (or hell in this case maybe even just Krazy Glue) and some scrap plastics as sort of bandages to bridge it in a few areas for strength. My reasoning behind this is the 1992-1994 cluster sits on the connector pins with just those flexi-circuit "fingers", instead of a true pin/socket arrangement, so it's important that it sits on there solidly. The 1992-1994 dash has a raised area around the connector whereas 1988-1991 does not. So if you do the swap and don't modify the dash plastic, your connector is just kind of sitting loose in there and may fall out at some point.
Richard